Technical Field
The present invention relates to a magnetic element capable of generating, erasing, and detecting skyrmions, a skyrmion memory, a skyrmion memory-device, a solid-state electronic device, a data-storage device, a data processing device, and a data communication device.
Related Art
A magnetic element is known that uses the magnetic moment of a magnet as digital information. This magnetic element includes a nanoscale magnetic structure that functions as an element of a nonvolatile memory that does not require power when holding information. Based on advantages such as ultra-high density resulting from the nanoscale magnetic structure, this magnetic element is expected to be used as a high-capacity information storage medium, and the importance thereof increases when used as a memory device of an electronic device.
Magnetic shift registers have been proposed, mainly by IBM in the US, as other candidates for next-generation magnetic memory devices. A magnetic shift register drives a magnetic domain wall to transfer the magnetic moment arrangement thereof through a current, and reads stored information (see Patent Document 1).
FIG. 57 is a schematic view of the principles of driving a magnetic domain wall with current. The domain wall is a boundary of a magnetic region where the orientations of magnetic moments are phase-inverted. In FIG. 57, the domain walls in a magnetic shift register 1 are shown by solid lines. The magnetic domain walls are driven by causing current with the orientation indicated by the arrows to flow in the magnetic shift register 1. By driving the domain walls, the magnetism caused by the orientation of the magnetic moment positioned above the magnetic sensor 2 changes. This magnetic change is sensed by the magnetic sensor 2, and magnetic information is derived.
However, this type of magnetic shift register 1 requires a large current when moving the magnetic domain walls, and there is a disadvantage that the transfer velocity of the magnetic domain walls is low.
Therefore, the inventors of the present application proposed a skyrmion magnetic element that uses skyrmions generated in the magnet as a storage unit (see Patent Document 2). In this proposal, the inventors of the present application showed that it is possible to drive skyrmions with current.